Good morning dear friends. Today is the 7th of
August, 1998. We are in the New Hamlet, and today we are going
to speak French. That’s good, isn’t it?
You know well that the Buddha is not God; the
Buddha is a human being like all of us. He suffered a lot. He
practiced, and he overcame his suffering and his difficulties,
in order to become a wonderful being who was very calm, very
compassionate, very understanding; and he had much happiness.
He showed us the way. The Buddha is our teacher, our master,
our spiritual father, our brother, and it is absolutely
possible to hold the hand of the Buddha while we walk. Every
day when I walk I hold the hand of the Buddha. This is
something very pleasant to do.
Remember that the Buddha is not God, the Buddha is
a human being like all of us. The Buddha had many friends and
many teachers. In a previous life the Buddha had been a
disciple of a master called Dipankara. Dipankara is a Pali
word, meaning he or she who lights the lamp. The world needs
light, and we need men and women who are able to light up the
lamps, to bring into this world the light of freedom, the
light of understanding, the light of love. Buddha Dipankara is
someone who is able to light up the lamp in order to shine
light on the way the world is. In that time the Buddha was a
student. He was following higher studies in letters, and his
dream was to become a statesman, like the Minister of Internal
Affairs, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or the Prime
Minister. That was his dream. In that time the Buddha,
Shakyamuni, was called bodhisattva, because he wasn’t yet
Buddha. The bodhisattva was a student, and his dream was to
become a statesman.
All the young people of his time had the same
dream: to study, to do research, in order to pass the exams
and to be chosen by the king to become a statesman. At that
time the parents and friends did everything they could to help
students to pass the exams. Every three years there were
examinations, and, if you passed the exams well, you could be
chosen, to be a statesman. In each province there was a
competition organized, and young people like the bodhisattva,
were asked to come to the competition. There were thousands of
people who were admitted to the competition, but only a
hundred could be chosen as statesmen. After they were chosen,
all of them were sent to the capital, so the king could make
another selection, and this was called the Imperial
Competition. The subject of the dissertation was prepared by
the king himself. He would ask them ten or fifteen question,
to find out if the candidates were able to understand the
situation of the country, of the society, and if they had any
ways to help the people and the society to develop and be
happier.
So the young man offered himself in the
competition, but he wasn’t chosen. It was with a lot of
despair that he left the competition. He had studied a lot,
and his dream was to be selected so he could become a
statesman, and then he could have a family, become rich and
famous, and be able to help his people and his land. But he
suffered despair after the competition because he hadn’t been
chosen, and he went back to his homeland very exhausted. He
had to walk for hours and hours across the mountains, through
the forests, and over the countryside.
One afternoon he was going past a hill, completely
exhausted, and he was hungry. He couldn’t go on. Just then he
met a hermit, a monk who lived very simply at the foot of a
hill. He stopped, and he noticed that the hermit was cooking
something in his little pot. He was hungry, he was so tired,
he was exhausted, and the worst thing was that despair was
ruling his heart. He stopped, and he asked for something to
eat, and the hermit said, "Rest a little bit, and when I have
finished cooking this soup, I will give you a bowl. But the
soup is not cooked, so please lie down. There are the roots of
a tree, you can use them as your pillow, and you can rest for
the moment, while I finish cooking this soup." The soup which
the hermit was making was a millet soup. I don’t know if you
know of a kind of cereal which is called millet. This was
called "golden millet," and it was very good. My mother often
made millet soup for me and I like it very much.
The young man lay down, and began to rest. All of a
sudden he fell into a deep dream. A very strange dream. In the
dream, he saw that he had been chosen in the triennial
competition, and he had been first out of a hundred young
people who had been chosen. After that he had been sent to the
capital in order to take part in the Imperial competition. He
did his very best to answer the questions asked by the
Emperor. He used all of his intelligence and all the knowledge
he had acquired through his reading of many, many volumes of
books. Then, he was chosen by the Emperor, and since he was
considered the most brilliant of all the young people who had
presented themselves at the competition, the Emperor offered
him the hand of the Princess. The Princess was very beautiful,
and you cannot imagine how happy he was. He was full of hope,
full of energy, he had been very fortunate.
He was given a very important post in the cabinet:
he was made the Minister of Defense. His land was very small,
situated next to a very strong country, and this strong
country would often send troops to invade the little country.
Therefore, the Emperor made him the Minister of Defense, so he
could prepare the land to fight against the invading forces
from the neighboring country. He went through many
difficulties, many sufferings. There was jealousy, there was
despair, there was anger, and his relationship with his wife,
the Princess, was not easy. They had arguments nearly every
day. They had two children, and the children were very
difficult to bring up. So there was a lot of unhappiness, a
lot of difficulties in his married life, and also in his
social and political life. Then suddenly, he learned that the
invading forces of the neighboring country were getting ready
to come and invade the country. So he had to call all of his
troops together, and send to them to the frontier to resist
this military invasion from the next country.
This Minister of Defense was not happy, and
therefore his relationships with his wife and his children
were not good. He didn’t have enough peace and intelligence
and clarity in his heart, and so, when he organized the
resistance against the enemy, he made a lot of mistakes. The
result was that the enemy army was able to invade his country,
and take a lot of territory. The news of the defeat was
brought to the Emperor, and he was furious with the Minister
of Defense. He designated someone else to be in charge of the
national defense, and he gave orders for the old Minister of
Defense to be beheaded.
In the dream the young man saw himself taken to the
execution block, surrounded by soldiers, to be beheaded in a
military ceremony. At the moment when he was about to be
beheaded, he heard something like the song of a bird, and he
woke up. He came out of his dream, and he didn’t know where he
was. When he looked to the left and the right, he saw that he
was at the foot of a hill, and near him was a hermit who was
stirring some millet soup in a little pot. It seemed that the
dream had not lasted very long, maybe fifteen minutes, but
during that time a whole lifetime had passed. I think that the
hermit helped this dream to come into the head of the young
man, to help him learn something: a whole life had passed in a
dream, and it wasn’t fifteen minutes at all. When he looked at
the hermit, the hermit looked at him with a beautiful smile,
and said, "Did you have a good rest? Now the soup is ready.
Sit down next to me, I’m going to give you a bowl of this good
soup." The young man stood up, and he was no longer hungry. He
had seen so much in his dream!
Each life can be a dream, and if you do not know
how to live each moment of your life deeply, your life will
pass like a dream, very quickly, maybe even more quickly than
fifteen minutes. The hermit was there, calm and serene, and he
was using a chopstick to stir the millet soup. Looking deeply
at the hermit you could see that peace was alive in him. He
was really alive, he was really happy. With peace, with
solidity and freedom, life is something wonderful, and
happiness is possible. The young man was sitting near the
hermit, and he asked him questions about the practice. Since
he was intelligent, he began to discover that peace in the
heart, that liberty and freedom in the heart, are very basic
for a happy life. Therefore, he gave up his ambitions to be a
statesman. He gave up his dreams. He wanted to learn to live
like the hermit, in order to be able to transform his
suffering and to bring peace and freedom back into his heart.
He decided to become a disciple of the hermit.
This hermit was the Buddha Dipankara, the one who
lights the lamp. And afterwards, the young man, when he had
practiced through many lifetimes, became a Buddha with the
name Shakyamuni. He is our teacher, he is our spiritual
father, he is our grandfather, and he is a person with whom we
can walk everyday when we do walking meditation. Therefore, if
you are a student in the university, think about this. Look
deeply into your ambitions, into your plans, to see if it’s
worth spending all your life and your energy to acquire these
objects of your desire. Would it be wiser to look deeply, in
order to be able to see that without inner freedom, without
solidity, without peace, no happiness will be possible?
To be in touch with someone, a friend, who knows
the path of freedom, who knows the path of the practice of
solidity and compassion, is something very necessary. The
Buddha Dipankara is always there, always near you. If you are
attentive, you will recognize him. There is a very important
word in Buddhism: it is kalyanamitra. It means a friend who is
wise, a friend who has light. This friend can be very close to
you, but because you are not mindful enough you have not been
able to recognize his presence near you. Buddha Dipankara is
there, with his freedom, with his understanding, with his
power of shining light. He is the lighter of the lamp for
society. You should recognize him and become close to him. You
should see him as your closest friend, in order to be able to
become what the Buddha Shakyamuni was able to become. This is
the theme of my talk: the friend of your life, your lifetime
friend, the friend who can uphold you, who can give you light,
so that you do not lose your way on paths full of darkness.
There are so many young people who are wandering in darkness:
alcohol, drugs, and destruction of the body and the mind by an
irresponsible way of life. All of this represents the
darkness, and too many young people suffer in our society.
Therefore we need a great deal of light. But Buddha Dipankara,
the person who lights up the lamps in order to bring us light
in the world, is always there, near us. We have to look. The
moment when you find that spiritual friend is a wonderful
moment, and you need to write to me and tell me that you have
met the Buddha Dipankara when you meet him or her.
The little bell will be invited, you will stand up
and bow to the Sangha, and then you can go out and continue to
discuss the Dharma.
(Bell)
My dear friends, I think that we need to set up an
alliance between parents and teachers to protect our children.
The environment in which our children live does not have
enough safety. There are too many negative things in this
environment, and the children are exposed to too many dangers.
We need to do something to protect the children, day and
night, against the aggressions of society. We have organized
our society in such a way that we produce many young people
who are uprooted from society, from their spiritual
traditions, from their families. We have been through times
when we have seen the family broken into pieces, and churches
which are empty of young people. The spiritual and moral
leaders are not able to inspire people, above all the younger
generation. There have been times when, and it is true now,
when people do not want to listen to the sound of the bell of
the church. In the United States, churches no longer ring
their bells, and monks no longer wear their habits when they
go outside the monastery. Religion has lost its prestige, it’s
lost the confidence of people, and so has the family. The
family is being broken up. There is no longer any happiness,
any harmony in the family. The children born into families
like that, growing up in families like that, no longer have
confidence in family life; and they no longer have confidence
in society or in the church. We have produced generations and
generations of young people who can be described as hungry
ghosts: hungry for love, for understanding. They can no longer
find values to accept and live with.
In my own country we have a tradition of offering
food to the hungry ghosts. Once a year, on the full moon day
of the seventh month of the lunar calendar—that is the next
full moon as far as our calendar here is concerned—each house
in our country has an ancestral altar. You have children in
the house, but you also have your ancestors in your house. And
the practice is to put yourself in contact with your ancestors
every day, and also to be in contact with your children every
day. This is a very important practice for us in Southeast
Asia. When the Catholic missionaries came to Southeast Asia,
they told us to abandon this ancestor worship and become
Christians. I’m sure that in Christianity there are many
things that we can learn and bring into our spiritual lives,
but to advise us to abandon our practice of being in touch
with our ancestors was something very negative. Every day
someone in the family has to dust the altar of the ancestors,
change the water in the flower vase, light a stick of incense
and come back to oneself before the altar for one or two
minutes. It is our daily practice in Vietnam, and every family
does this.
The children see their father practicing like this,
and they see their mother or their elder sister practicing
like this, and they learn how to do the same things: how to
dust, how to light incense on the altar. This is a time to be
in touch with your roots. If you are uprooted, you cannot be a
happy person; therefore you have to keep in touch with your
ancestors. They are always there in the family, and in our
tradition, everything that happens, every special event in the
family, has to be announced to the ancestors. If you are about
to send your son to the university, you prepare a little
offering to the ancestors, light incense, and tell the
ancestors, "A week from now we are going to send this young
man to the university." This is not superstition. It is
communication with our ancestors, our own source.
The ancestral altar is a symbol. The ancestors are
not on the altar, they are in you. But when you look at the
altar, you touch the essence of your ancestors in you, and
that is the essence of the practice. Even if you are very
poor, even if you do not have enough to eat, you will always
have an altar for the ancestors in your house, and the altar
is always put in the central place in the house. If someone in
the family is very sick, your must tell the ancestors, and ask
the ancestors to send their support to the one who is sick.
Your ancestors are in you, the strong cells in your body, and
if you can touch your ancestors, especially those ancestors
who lived a long life, perhaps ninety years, you are touching
the strong cells in you, and those strong cells can help the
cells in you which are not strong, to become strong again.
If you have cancer, you know that there are cells
in you which are not working as they should. There is a kind
of disorder in your body. Maybe your way of life is not
healthy, there is too much stress. Being in touch with your
grandfather or your grandmother, who is in you, who was in
good health, who was able to overcome their physical and
psychological difficulties, you activate the strong elements
in yourself in order to be able to get better. So to be able
to be in touch with ancestors is a wonderful practice. When
you do that you receive a great deal of energy, and
understanding and wisdom, and also a great deal of love, which
has been handed down to you in the form of seeds. In your
store consciousness, your ancestors are all there, with their
wisdom, their love. So when you touch the ancestral altar, you
touch the ancestors in yourself. If you’re going to marry your
daughter to a young man in the neighboring village, you have
to tell the ancestors, so there is a regular and continual
contact with the ancestors. This is an essential practice as
far as I am concerned, and I have proposed it to our Western
friends. It is not superstition.
In Plum Village, in the Lower Hamlet, we always
used to make an altar for the spirit of the Earth. In all the
houses in Vietnam, there is a little altar to the spirit of
the Earth. The Earth protects us, the Earth nourishes us,
giving us the food that we need and everything else.
Therefore, every time we light incense and come back to
ourselves before the altar of the Earth spirit, we make a deep
aspiration to protect the Earth, because in protecting the
Earth, we protect ourselves. This all comes from the spiritual
tradition of Southeast Asia.
If you know how to be in touch with your ancestors,
then you know how to be in touch with your children and your
grandchildren. It is the same thing. You need time to be with
your young people, with your children. Not with incense, but
with other things: with your breathing, and by walking in the
woods with them. I have suggested that we have a little
meditation room in each house to be called the breathing room,
and there you can renew yourselves. In daily life we are
always losing ourselves: we lose our energy, we lose our calm,
we lose our honesty. Therefore we need somewhere to be able to
go back to ourselves, to be able to renew ourselves. And we
call this place the breathing room or the meditation room. In
each house of the next century we want to have this kind of
room. We have a room for everything: for guests, for children
to play in, to sleep, to receive our guests. We have rooms for
all these things, but we do not have rooms to renew ourselves,
to takes care of our nervous systems. We need a room for our
nervous systems, a room where we can make ourselves new, and
we can renew the relationships between ourselves and those who
live with us. In this room, you can put a little table, with
maybe a vase of flowers—or maybe one flower is enough, because
this flower symbolizes freshness and beauty and truth. You do
not need a statue of the Buddha, but you may need a flower and
a few cushions for the different members of your family. Each
morning, before leaving the house to go to the office or
school, it would be wonderful to sit down together for just
one or two minutes. Invite the bell to sound, listen deeply,
practice deep listening to the sound of the bell. Touch the
depth of your being, touch your spiritual ancestors, and your
blood ancestors, and breathe mindfully in and out. This is a
wonderful way to begin our day.
Before we have to leave each other, we may say,
"Have a good day" to the other person, but this is just a
wish. Rather than just wishing that the day will be good, we
can make the day good. We can begin our day in such a way that
it will be a good day. Sitting on a cushion with your husband
or your wife, and with your children, to listen to the bell
three times, to breathe deeply at the same time, is a
beautiful practice, and it’s very easy to do. You will see
harmony and unity in the family, and the child who is there
will also feel something. This kind of thing will nourish the
children, and throughout their lives they will be able to use
these practices as a refuge.
Before going to bed, we can do the same thing.
Instead of praying, we can practice a little meditation, just
for one minute, before wishing "goodnight" to our children. As
parents you can sit with your children for one or two minutes.
You can say, "Children, it’s time to go into the breathing
room. Let’s sit down and listen to the bell." You turn off the
television and go with the children into this little room,
which represents peace and calm, and the spirituality of the
house. We need a source of spirituality in our houses, and
this room represents our spiritual traditions. Therefore we go
to this room to sit down peacefully. We go to that room with
walking meditation, taking the hand of a child. It is a way of
expressing your love, to take the hand of your child, and to
go to the breathing room with peace and solidity, and also to
give your child peace and happiness. Stay with your child a
minute, and listen to the bell. The bell can be invited by the
child, and after that the child will go to bed. You will
continue what you have to do in the family, and when the time
comes for you to go to bed, you will do the same with your
husband or wife. These are very simple things to do, but they
are very important. It’s rather like having an ancestral
altar.
We all have ancestors, spiritual and blood
ancestors, and we know that someone who is cut off from their
roots cannot be happy. Thus, the practice is to be able to put
down our roots, re-root ourselves. It’s very important to be
able to do this. The child needs to go back to his or her
roots; how can they do that? Only with you. You need to help
the child to go back to his or her roots, organizing your
daily family life in such a way that the child can practice
rooting himself or herself every day.
Without roots we become hungry ghosts. Look around
your. There are so many young people who are completely
uprooted from their cultures, their families, and their
spiritual traditions. They have nothing to do with them. They
are looking for something true and beautiful and good, but
they are unable to find these things. In the church they
cannot find them, in the family they cannot find them, in
society they cannot find them, and they despair. In their
anguish, they feel that they feel they cannot go on. They
cannot bear this terrible emptiness, since they can find
nothing beautiful in the world, nothing true, nothing good.
Therefore they despair, and despair is the most terrible
poison. Young people have come to this point, this sickness of
despair, and therefore they use drugs, or they use music, or
they use alcohol, and destroy themselves physically, and
mentally.
The government has had to use strong means to stop
the importation of drugs, even using the army. They use
airplanes and helicopters to mount an attack on those who
bring in drugs. But the only way is to see the cause of people
wanting to take drugs, which is because of a lack. People feel
the need for something to believe in: truth, goodness, beauty,
without which life has no meaning. That is why the young
people have suffered so much, and many of them have become
hungry ghosts. I have met many young people who are hungry
ghosts, or wandering spirits. They come to our practice
center. You only have to look at them for one or two minutes
and you will be able to identify them as hungry ghosts. The
way they walk, the way they sit, the way they stand up, proves
that they are hungry ghosts. They are hungry for
understanding, hungry for love, and wherever they go they are
not understood by the church, their families or society.
In my own country, on full moon day of the seventh
month, we offer food for the hungry spirits. We can do this in
France also, but in a different way. As far as we believe, a
hungry ghost has a huge belly, and an esophagus as thin as a
needle. We call them pretas in Sanskrit. Even if you have food
to offer to these hungry ghosts, it is impossible for them to
swallow it, because their throats are too small. They cannot
swallow, therefore in the ceremony we have to use a mantra
which is able to make their throats the usual size, so that
they are able to receive food. We make the offering in the
garden, in front of the house, because only the ancestors can
eat at the ancestral altar, and there isn’t enough room there
for the hungry ghosts. Therefore a table is set up in the
garden in front of the house, and on that table we offer food
and drink for the hungry ghosts. And we recite mantras and
dharani, magic formulas to help hungry ghosts have throats of
a normal size, so that they are able to receive food and
drink. There are many chants also, and readings from the
sutras to help the hungry ghosts to have a deeper
understanding of the practice, so that they can transform
themselves. This is the living practice in Vietnam.
Now if we look around us we will see that the
hungry ghosts are always there, and every day we create more
hundreds of thousands of hungry ghosts. The way in which we
organize our society produces hundreds of thousands of hungry
ghosts every day. I have tried a great deal to help these
young people, but it is very difficult, because there is so
much suspicion in them. They do not believe us easily. Even if
you have something to offer them, it is difficult for them to
accept it, because of their suspicion and doubt. We need to be
very patient to gain their trust. Before we gain their trust,
we cannot do anything to help them. They need understanding,
they need love. But even if you have understanding and love,
it is difficult to give it to them, because they are
suspicious of everything, and they doubt everything. Therefore
you need a lot of patience in order to help them. You need to
learn how to embrace them with your tolerance, and above all
with your patience. One day a little root may emerge, and
you’ll have hope; your task is to help that person to have
roots, to put down their roots again, and you’ll do your best
to send that person back to their family, their society, and
their church.
Understanding is essential. We need to understand
why the situation in the family has become what it is; we have
to understand why that situation in the church has become what
it is. We have to understand why the situation in the society
has become what it is. And once we understand that, we can
forgive, and we will be able to have enough energy to go back
and to do something to renew the institution called family,
church or society. The family needs to be restructured. With
the practice and mindfulness, you can restructure your family,
and you can restructure your church, your society. We need to
truly bring about the energy of understanding and compassion
in the family, in order to be able to reclaim the young people
who have left us. When we practice mindfulness, we can look
deeply and try to restructure our families. We act in such a
way that understanding and harmony and being in touch are
possible every day. Practice in such a way that you can be in
touch with your ancestors every day. Practice in such a way
that the relationship between you and your children is
re-established, and communication is restored.
It is necessary to practice listening deeply, to
practice compassionate listening. And practicing loving speech
is also necessary. All these things are taught in practice
centers. Learn how to listen, to your ancestors, to your
children, and your partner. Without doing this, you cannot
re-establish communication, and without communication will be
lost.
Deep listening means compassionate listening. It is
something we have to train ourselves in straight away, because
many of us have lost the capacity to listen. There’s too much
pain and too much irritation in us, and we are not able to
listen with patience and compassion. In each of us there is
some suffering, there is despair, there is anger and
irritation. There are people who are like bombs, ready to
explode at any moment, and we are afraid to go near them, we
are afraid to talk to them. The slightest mistake will make
them explode. When we try to avoid such a person, he thinks we
have given up on him or her, he thinks everyone hates him or
her. Therefore, at all costs, we should learn how to
communicate, and the practice of listening deeply is
absolutely necessary.
In Buddhism there is someone called
Avalokiteshvara. He or she is someone who has wonderful
ability to listen with compassion, knowing that the other
person suffers so much. We know that they need to express
themselves, but nobody in the house dares to listen, because
everyone else has their own suffering. When listening to the
other person with all your pain, it is possible that you will
what you hear will water the seeds of suffering in you, and
when those seeds are watered you will have no more patience or
ability to listen deeply. Compassionate listening has one aim
only, and that is to relieve the suffering of the other
person. You need to breathe mindfully in order to nourish your
intention to listen. I have no other motivation for listening
other than to give the person the opportunity to express
themselves. We need to train for a long time in order to be
able to do this. Even if the other person accuses you, even if
the other person is full of wrong perceptions, even if the
other person accuses you quite unjustly, is always reproaching
you, you keep your compassion alive, and you are able to stay
by them, silently, calmly. Your business is to listen, even if
there is no truth, no justice in what they are saying. If you
can listen for an hour like that it is already a wonderful
help to the other person. You are the best kind of
psychotherapist, because you have the capacity to listen with
compassion, just to listen. You don’t have to say anything.
Even if the other person says very foolish things, if all of
his perceptions are wrong, even if he or she accuses you, you
always follow your breath and keep calm, because you are
playing the role of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, listening in
order to relieve the suffering. This is something that anyone
can do.
If you practice mindful breathing sitting
meditation, walking meditation for a week, you will be able to
acquire the capacity to listen deeply to the other person. And
with the practice of deep listening goes the practice of
loving speech, a kind of speech which is characterized by
calmness. You have the right to say everything which is in
your heart. You do not need to hide things. You don’t need to
hide anything. You have the right, even the duty, to tell
everything that is in your heart, but you have to say it in a
loving way, a calm way. This may not be easy. It takes a lot
of concentration.
At first you may have a very strong intention to
use only calm words, but when you begin to speak you begin to
touch the blocks of suffering within yourself, and you lose
yourself. There are vibrations in your voice. The pain begins
to manifest itself in your words. You suffer, you become
irritable, and your words lose their capacity to communicate.
The energy of your pain starts to rise up in you until you can
no longer speak with loving speech. In such a case you
shouldn’t continue. You should say, "My dear one, I do not
feel quite right. I promise that we can continue another day."
And at that point you retire. You should not try too much. You
should stop as soon as you see that you are no longer calm.
You have your limits, and you know your limits. Therefore, you
have to train more and more, until you can stay for half an
hour or an hour, and practice loving speech. You have to
communicate to the other in such a way that they can accept
what you are saying. Tell them the truth. Tell them what has
made you suffer. Do not blame or make any accusations. Just
help the other to see what is in your heart: "Darling, I have
suffered, and this is my suffering. I just wanted you to know
what is happening in me, because I need your help. Without you
I cannot do it." At this moment there is a transformation, a
healing, and you have to commit yourself in this way so that
the other person can sit down and listen to you.
One of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, the Fourth
Mindfulness Training, is about the practice of deep listening
and loving speech. You know that without practicing mindful
walking, mindful breathing, without being able to embrace your
pain while breathing deeply, we cannot do this deep listening.
Therefore, it all a practice which you have to apply in your
daily lives. When you are in a mindfulness retreat, you must
make all efforts to learn and to make a firm beginning in the
practice. Every day of practice will bring you more strength,
and you will learn the art of living mindfully. You will learn
how to walk, how to sit, how to breathe, how to listen, and
how to use calm and loving speech. When you go back home you
have to arrange things in such a way that your practice will
continue. If you have a partner who can practice with you, you
are very lucky. If you have a child who is ready to practice
with you, that is very good. But if you are alone, you can
practice in such a way that others can see you are now a more
pleasant person, more fresh, more loving. We have confidence
in the practice because the practice can modify everything.
And the practice begins with you, yourself, and then it will
increase and go to others and touch those who live with you.
You don’t have to wait for the other to change. You should
begin to change yourself, in your own way, with your own
words, by your listening, by your walking, by your way of
eating and your way of living your daily life. Then the peace,
happiness and calm in you will be noticed by others. In this
way you have begun to change the situation, through change in
yourself, before you are able to change what is outside of
yourself.
(Bell)
We all have a tendency to blame the other person.
If things are not going well, we say that it’s his fault, or
her fault. If something’s going wrong, it must be him, or it
must be her—it’s not me! The Buddha said, "This is because
that is; this is not, because that is not. This is like this,
because that is like that." He used very simple words. You
want to change the other person, whether it happens to be your
child or your spouse, but you don’t think about changing
yourself. First of all the change has to take place in you—the
way you listen, the way you speak, the way you walk, the way
you sit down, the way you work—you can change it all, you can
better it all, in order to help others to change.
(Bell)
The Buddha has taught us six ways of going beyond,
of going over to the shore of non-suffering. In order to be
able to cross the river of our difficulties and arrive at the
other side, the shore of well being. This teaching is called
the teaching of the Six Paramitas, the six ways of going
across, of going over. If you’re angry, you’re on this side of
the river, but you shouldn’t stay on this side of the river.
You should do something to get to the other side, the side of
well being. This is something we can do in our daily lives.
Often we find ourselves in a difficult position, which has
been brought about by our own psyche; we can do something in
order to get out of this position. The heart of the practice
is mindfulness. We all know that mindfulness is an energy
which allows us to be there in the present moment, to become
really present, to become truly and totally alive. I’m going
to draw something. This is a circle, with this character,
which means mindfulness. The Chinese word for mindfulness is
written like this: the top half means now, and underneath we
have the character which means mind. Your mind comes back to
the present moment, that is what is meant by mindfulness. So
breathing in, or taking a step, you’re able to bring your body
and your mind back together, and suddenly you are really there
in the here and the now. This state of being is called the
oneness of body and mind. It’s a very simple practice, but
it’s very efficient and it’s very efficacious. Only one
breathing in or breathing out will bring you back to the
present moment, and there you will be able to touch life
deeply.
I’m drawing a petal, because the Six Paramitas, the
six crossings-over, are thought of as a flower. The first
practice is called the practice of giving. You have to know
how to give, and if you are able to give, you will go beyond
suffering, and you will re-establish well being in yourself.
What do you have to give? Do you need money in order to be
able to give? No. You always have something to give, and I
want to tell you that the most precious thing that you can
give is your presence. You can always offer your presence to
someone as a gift. When you love someone, what can you give
them, what can you do, to have something to give them? You can
give your presence, because without being present you cannot
have love. To love means to be there, body and mind united.
This is something you can do. Breathing mindfully, you come
back to yourself, and you can look at the other person and
say, "Darling, I am here for you." If you are not there, how
can you love? We are all so busy, and our presence for the
person we love is something very rare.
I know a child of eleven years old, and his father
asked him, "Tomorrow is your birthday. Can I buy something for
you?" The young man was not interested. His father was
extremely rich, and he could have bought anything for his son,
but the child didn’t need that kind of thing. He had so many
toys already. He only needed one thing: his father’s presence.
When you are rich, you have to use your time and energy to
stay rich. You don’t have enough time for being with the ones
you love. So if a father is intelligent, he will see that the
most beautiful present he can give to his child is his own
presence. Often we are there physically, but we are not there
spiritually. We are lost in the past, in the future, and in
our plans. We are not really there. A child is disappointed, a
wife is disappointed, a husband is disappointed. You are not
really there. So the child can come and touch your shoulder,
and he can say, "Is someone home?" You’ll come out of your
dream, out of your prison, out of the past and the future, and
come back to yourself. If the child doesn’t do that you’ll
have to do it for yourself. You have to take some steps into
mindfulness, take some breaths in mindfulness, make yourself
present, look at your child, and say: "Darling, I am here for
you now." You open your arms, and that is the most precious
gift you can give to the one you love: your own presence. You
don’t need money to do this.
When you are there, something else is there too. As
I said yesterday, when you are really there, life is there
too. Life with all its wonders: the blue sky, the luxurious
vegetation, the setting sun, the full moon, the wonderful face
of the one you love, all these things are available to you. If
you are not there, you will lose it all, these things do not
mean anything. But when you are there, the other thing is
there too, and you are practicing the recognition of what is
beautiful and wonderful in your life. When you are there, the
person you love is there too. So you can open your eyes,
smile, and make a declaration: "Darling, I know you are there,
and it makes me very happy." To be loved is to be recognized
as being, as existing, and you should confirm your mindfulness
of the other person’s existence. "Darling you are there,
alive, and that is something very precious as far as I am
concerned. I am very happy because of it." With the energy of
mindfulness you embrace the one you love, and when someone is
surrounded by this wonderful energy, they will open like a
flower. That person may be your child, may be your daughter,
your son, that person may be your partner. You can have the
luxury of the practice, and with one conscious breath, some
mindful breathings, some mindful steps, you can bring about
your own presence, and make it a present for the one you love.
In tantric Buddhism we practice reciting dharanis,
and we say that by reciting these magic formulae we change the
situation. But now we can recite mantras in French or English.
With right mindfulness present in you, you become really
there, really alive. You have only to open your mouth and say
the words: "Darling, I am here for you. I am really here for
you". That is the mantra. The second one: "Darling, I know you
are there, and it makes me very happy," is another mantra,
something which can make the other person happy straight away,
instantly. The essence of the practice is mindfulness, and
with mindfulness you are really there, you are there in the
situation to be able to recognize the presence of the other
person. To be loved is to be recognized as existing.
Remember, there are moments when you are driving
your car, and he or she is sitting next to you. You are
thinking about everything, but you don’t think about the
person sitting next to you—you think that you know everything
about that person. You can even be singing a song, and
thinking about your future and your plans, and you are quite
unaware of the person who is sitting next to you. There is no
mindfulness. You are not practicing love. Love is the energy
of mindfulness which surrounds and embraces the object of your
love.
(Bell)
These two mantras can be practiced in French,
English, German or Italian. I can assure you that it will
work, and lead to the energy of mindfulness. If the energy of
mindfulness is in you, the mantras will be very effective. You
will see straight away the effect of this practice in the
present moment. You should nourish the person you love with
mindfulness and with your real presence. You should nourish
yourself with this mindfulness, this energy of mindfulness.
You should be there for yourself; you should be there for the
person you love. You know what to do in order to be there for
yourself and for the other.
When the other suffers, which he or she will do
from time to time, if you are really there you will notice
that there is suffering there, and with the same method you
light up the lamp of mindfulness in yourself, you go to him or
her, and you recite the third mantra: "Dear one, I know you
are suffering, and that is why I am here for you." When you
suffer, and the person you love most of all is not aware of
it, you suffer even more. But if the person you love is there
and is aware that you are suffering, your suffering is already
relieved. You suffer much less, because your loved one knows
that you are suffering. Before you’ve actually done anything
to help the other, your presence alone has transformed the
situation. Your presence is healing and transforming. This is
something not difficult to do. Having practiced somewhat, you
can change the atmosphere in the family and you can improve
the quality of relationship between you and your loved ones.
I have a fourth mantra which is a little difficult
to practice, but we need to be able to train to do it. It’s an
important mantra. You use it when you are suffering yourself,
and you think that the other person is the reason for your
suffering, the person that you love most of all. It’s
difficult. If somebody else had said that, had done that, you
would have suffered much less; but because that person, the
person you love the most, said that or did that, you suffer a
hundred times more. You want to close yourself in your room in
order to cry on your own, and if that person comes towards
you, you prefer that he or she not touch you: "Leave me
alone." That is your natural tendency. When you suffer, you
want to be alone. You feel that the other person is the cause
of your suffering, and you do not want to be helped by him or
her. You want to show that you don’t need him or her. This is
very childish, but we all do this. When we think that the
other person is the reason for our suffering, we want to show
them that we can be all alone, that we don’t need them. The
fourth mantra is something which will help you.
There is a story, a tragedy, which everyone in my
country knows about. The story of a man who went to war and
left his wife at home, pregnant. When they were separated,
they cried a lot, but, fortunately, two years later he came
back home. By that time the little boy had been born. His wife
and his little boy came to the gate of the village to meet the
veteran. He wept in their arms, and then he said to his wife,
"Go to the market and buy some things to be able to prepare an
offering to put on the ancestral altar, and to announce to the
ancestors that the soldier has returned." The ancestors always
need to be told the good news.
When his wife was at the market, the husband tried
to persuade the child to call him Daddy. "No, mister, you are
not my Daddy. My Daddy is someone else. He comes every night,
and my Mommy talks a long time to him, many times, and she
cries a lot. Each time she sits down, he sits down too. Each
time she lies down, he lies down too." The child spoke all
these terrible things, and the happiness of the husband
disappeared completely. He became a block of ice. When his
young wife came home, he did not look at her. His suffering
was so great, it came right up to his heart. There was nothing
he could do. After he had offered incense to the ancestors, he
touched the earth four times, as we do in Vietnam, and he
addressed his prayer to the ancestors. Then he rolled up the
mat on which he had touched the earth, so that his wife would
not be able to touch the earth in front of the ancestors. He
thought that his wife was unfaithful to him, and therefore was
not worthy to present herself before the ancestors. His wife
was still very young, she didn’t understand at all why her
husband’s attitude had changed so drastically after she came
back from the market. She suffered too much. She kept all this
suffering within her own heart, because she was proud. He was
proud. He suffered so much, but his pride was too great to
allow him to share his suffering with his wife.
After having told the ancestors the good news that
he had returned home, he went out into the village, and he
spent all his time in the bar, drinking alcohol. When people
suffer a lot, if they do not know how to practice, they use
alcohol to drown their suffering. Usually, after an offering
like this, the whole family needs to come together before the
altar to celebrate the good news; but he went out into the
village, and he only came back at two o’clock in the morning.
He did this for three or four days, and his wife couldn’t bear
it any longer. She threw herself into the river and drowned
herself.
After hearing the news the young husband came back
home to take care of his child. That night, he lit up the
kerosene lamp in the house, and the little boy pointed to the
shadow of his father, and he said, "Mister, that’s my father.
He comes every night, and Mommy speaks to him every night, and
she cries a lot. And every time she sits down, he sits down
too." The child’s words! Now the husband began to understand.
The father the child talked about was just the shadow thrown
onto the wall. His wife had spoken to a shadow every night:
"My dear husband, you’ve been away so long. How can I, all
alone, take care of our little boy?" and then she would cry.
And of course, every time she sat down, the shadow sat down
too. Wrong perception had now been removed, but it was too
late. The young lady was already dead, and there was no way to
bring her back to life.
If there had been ho pride, the young man could
have come to his wife and said, "While you were out in the
market, our little boy said that someone comes to visit you
every night. I don’t understand. I’m suffering so much because
of this. You have to explain it to me." If he had done this,
his young wife would have had an opportunity to explain, and
both of them would not have had to undergo the tragedy which
happened. But he didn’t do that. His wife too had suffered
greatly, but the pride she had stopped her going to her
husband and saying: "Darling, why are you acting like this?
Why are you behaving like this? Since I came back from the
market you haven’t looked at me, you haven’t spoken to me.
Have I done something so terrible, to be treated like this?"
If his wife had said something like that, then her husband
would have been able to explain what had happened, and
together they would have not had to go through this tragedy.
All of us, we can make the same mistake in our
daily lives, when we suffer, and we think that the other
person is the cause of our suffering, we want to be alone, we
want to show: "I don’t need you any more. I can live without
you." This is a very childish attitude, but it always remains
in us. So the fourth mantra is to help you to go across the
river and reach the other shore. You need mindful breathing,
mindful walking, mindfulness in all your activities; and then
with calm words you go to the other and you say, "Darling, I
am suffering so much. You have to help me; you have to
explain: why did you do that? Why did you say that? Without
you I cannot get out of this difficulty I’m in." If you have
the ability to say such a thing is such a way, then the person
you love will have the chance to explain to you, and if there
is a wrong perception, you will be able to free yourself from
that wrong perception.
In daily life, there are so many wrong perceptions,
and sometimes we keep a wrong perception for a very long time.
For ten years, twenty years, a wrong perception can destroy
our relationship. Therefore, I do not want my friends to make
the same mistake as Mr. Truong. Next time you are suffering
and you think that the suffering is caused by the person that
you love most in the world, remember the fourth mantra.
"Darling, I’m suffering so much. I don’t understand why you,
the person that I love most in the world, could have said
something like this, could have done something like this to
me. Help me. Explain why you did that." This will bring a lot
of mindfulness energy to the other, and the other will say
something to help you get out of your difficult situation.
The gift of giving…giving is a way of going across
the river of suffering, and establishing yourself on the shore
of well being. The first gift you give is your presence, your
mindfulness of what is in the present moment. This energy of
mindfulness will relieve the suffering, and therefore it is a
present you can give to the one you love. The Buddha said when
you are angry and you have done everything you can to put an
end to your anger, but you have not yet managed to do that,
practice giving. Find something and offer it to the person who
has caused your suffering, caused your anger, and the Buddha
guarantees that after giving your anger will be transformed. I
suggest that you do not wait until you are angry to prepare
the gift you will be giving. Prepare the gift beforehand.
Maybe that person is your father, is your husband, your wife,
your partner. Sometimes you are angry with him or her;
therefore, prepare yourself in advance, before it happens
again, and have a present ready, or kind words written, and
keep the present in your house. When you feel angry and you
have done everything you can to get over your anger but it
doesn’t work, you bring out your present, you go to the Post
Office, and you send it to him or her. You don’t have to wait.
Once you have sent the present in the post, you will already
feel that your anger has been transformed. If you are angry
with someone, give him or her something. That is what the
Buddha said. Giving is a way, a wonderful way, to come to the
other shore.
Another petal is called mindfulness, mindfulness
training. This is the practice of protection. The five
Mindfulness Trainings are to protect you and your loved ones.
If you live according to the insight of the Five Mindfulness
Trainings, you will be able to put yourself in a safe place.
If you love someone, you should practice the mindfulness
trainings. It’s a kind of gift. When love is new, you want the
person you love to be safe. Therefore, you can sign up with an
insurance company, you think only in monetary terms. We can
protect our selves and the people we love with money, but
there are other ways to protect oneself. According to the
Buddha, to protect oneself with mindfulness is the surest way
to protect yourself. There are countries where, when we say
goodbye to somebody, we say, "Take care." Either at the
beginning of a journey, or just at the beginning of a day, we
say: "Take good care." In Vietnam, and in China, we say than
trong. "Take care." It expresses love. If you love someone,
look after yourself. Looking after yourself, you look after
the one you love. It’s very clear.
You love your child, but you cannot be with your
child 24hrs a day, your child has to go to school. Your child
has to be in touch with others in the society, so he is at
risk. How can you make your child secure, safe? When something
happens to you, it happens to your child; when something
happens to your child, it happens to you. You and your child
inter-are. We inter-are. Therefore, to protect oneself is to
protect the other, and helping the other to protect themselves
is to protect yourself. That is exactly what we are learning
here in the Five Mindfulness Trainings. If you study deeply
the nature of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, you will see
that they are realistic ways to protect you, to protect your
loved ones, and to protect your society. For example, the
Fourth Mindfulness Training, which concerns the art of deep
listening and loving speech. If you train yourself to listen
deeply, to speak lovingly, you will protect yourself and you
will protect other members of your family. There are so many
families which are broken because people cannot communicate
between themselves within the family. We are not capable of
listening, of speaking calmly, and we provoke dangerous
situations in our families. Separation is a dangerous
situation. Hate is a dangerous situation. And they come from
us, ourselves. It’s not like a car accident, which can happen
because of somebody else’s driving. The seed of anger is
always there in us, and our lack of mindfulness can always put
our anger into motion. So to practice mindful speech and
listening will protect you and the others.
The Fifth Mindfulness Training concerns
consumption, the practice of mindful consumption. We know that
we can ingest elements that bring war and disorder into our
body. We can ingest elements that will destroy our minds. When
a child is exposed to television programs which are not
healthy, this is dangerous consumption. When you read a book,
when you look at television, you are consuming. When you
listen to a conversation which contains a lot of poisons and
despair, you are consuming these things. We are prey to so
many toxins in our daily lives. Therefore, the Fifth
Mindfulness Training is to protect us and our loved ones by
mindful consumption. Before eating something, we have to look
deeply to see whether this food is going to destroy or nourish
us. The same is true for spiritual nourishment, magazines,
television programs, conversations—all these things can be
toxic. We have to practice mindfulness in order to understand,
in order to identify the products which we consume. Can they
help us to heal? We should avoid all kinds of products which
will ruin us. And so we come together as a family, as a
Sangha, and we make laws concerning consumption. If we are
depressed, it is because we have consumed without mindfulness,
we have allowed toxins and poisons to come into us. By our
consumption, we have listened, we have looked, we have
thought, we have allowed these toxic elements to come into us.
To consume mindfully is a way to protect ourselves, which is
very effective and absolutely necessary. If you are able to
apply this practice in your family, there will be perfect
security for your family. If you can live with these
protections, that is the most beautiful gift you can give to
your society, and to your family. Therefore the practice of
mindful consumption is a form of gift.
So many families have been broken by sexual
misconduct. We are talking about the Third Mindfulness
Training. Sex without love and a real long-term commitment is
empty sex, and it’s dangerous. We think that the emptiness in
us will dissolve if we have a sexual relationship with another
person. We feel a vacuum, an emptiness within ourselves, and
we cannot bear this: "I don’t want to undergo this." We feel
too lonely, and we think that our loneliness will dissolve
when we have sexual relations with another person. When two
bodies come together in a sexual way, there must be mutual
understanding, there must be deep and perfect communication,
so that the sexual act is not empty. We live in a time when
young people practice empty sex, and this is very dangerous.
At thirteen or fourteen years old, when they don’t know
anything about real love, they have sex, which is something
very destructive. We have live in such a way, and tell our
children, that it is very dangerous to have empty sex, because
empty sex will stop you being able to experience real love in
the future. Real love only comes from deeply understanding
each other. There has to be perfect communication, there has
to be deep sharing, as far as our ideals in life are
concerned.
We have be in agreement about how we will get out
of our difficulties together, we have to know how to be
partners in the family and in the society, before we have
sexual relations. Because of empty sex and violence, young
people today can destroy everything. We have to give them a
good example. We have to live in a way that shows young people
the way, and therefore the Third Mindfulness Training is about
protection of the family, of children, from sexual abuse. Our
society has been damaged by this sexual misconduct. As a
Sangha, we should get together and practice looking deeply to
find ways to protect ourselves and to protect our families
against this practice of empty sex, which is truly
destructive. We will continue this teaching on Sunday in
Vietnamese. First of all giving, and then the practice of
Mindfulness Trainings. We are going to talk about the practice
of inclusiveness.
As far as I am concerned, the practice of the Five
Mindfulness Trainings is the only way to help us get out of
our difficult situation in our society today. I am sure that
if everyone could go back to their spiritual source, and
practice looking deeply, they would discover the equivalent of
the Five Mindfulness Trainings in their own traditions. They
are not things imposed on us by someone else. They are the
result of the deep insight that we have discovered when we
live in mindfulness. You know what is happening. You know
about the destruction, the pain the suffering which reigns in
the world, and when you look deeply at the world, you see that
if we have this kind of suffering, it is because we have done
something, or we have failed to do something. Therefore, we
come to a kind of wisdom, and that wisdom is that we should
live mindfully in order to restructure our own lives, our
family life and our social life. If you ask me what we can do
to get out of this difficult situation, I would say quite
simply, live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings. The
Five Mindfulness Trainings give a very concrete way to live
our daily lives mindfully. Mindfulness manifests concretely in
the Five Mindfulness Trainings, which can be seen as the way
of liberation, the path of emancipation.
(Three Bells)
End of Dharma talk.
